Word and Object: Difference between revisions

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'''''Word and Object''''' is a 1960 work by the philosopher [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in ''From a Logical Point of View'' (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack in "[[Two Dogmas of Empiricism]]" on the [[analytic–synthetic distinction]].<ref name="autobio">{{cite book |author= Quine, Willard Van Orman |editor= |title=The Time of My Life: An Autobiography |publisher=MIT Press |___location= Cambridge, Massachusetts |year=1985 |page=392 |isbn= 978-0262670043 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref> The thought experiment of [[radical translation]] and the accompanying notion of [[indeterminacy of translation]] are original to ''Word and Object'', which is Quine's most famous book.<ref name="Gibsonarticle" />

==Synopsis==

Quine emphasizes his [[Naturalism (philosophy)|naturalism]], the doctrine that philosophy should be pursued as part of natural science.<ref name="Hookway772">{{cite book |author=Hookway, C. J. |editor=Honderich, Ted |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |___location=Oxford |year=2005 |page=779 |isbn=0-19-926479-1 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref> He argues in favor of naturalizing [[epistemology]], supports [[physicalism]] over [[phenomenalism]] and mind-body dualism, and [[extensionality]] over [[intension]]ality, develops a behavioristic conception of sentence-meaning, theorizes about language learning, speculates on the ontogenesis of reference, explains various forms of ambiguity and vagueness, recommends measures for regimenting language to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness as well as to make perspicuous the logic and [[ontic]] commitments of theories, argues against quantified modal logic and the [[essentialism]] it presupposes, argues for [[Platonic realism]] in mathematics, rejects [[instrumentalism]] in favor of [[scientific realism]], develops a view of philosophical analysis as explication, argues against analyticity and for [[holism]], against countenancing propositions, and tries to show that the meanings of theoretical sentences are indeterminate and that the reference of terms is inscrutable.<ref name="Gibsonarticle">{{cite book |author=Gibson, Roger F. |editor=Audi, Robert |title=The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy |publisher=Cambridge University Press |___location=Cambridge |year=1999 |pages=767–768 |isbn=0-521-63722-8 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref>

==Behaviorism==

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Central to Quine's philosophy is his linguistic [[behaviorism]]. Quine has remarked that one may or may not choose to be a behaviorist in psychology, but one has no choice but to be a behaviorist in linguistics.<ref>''The Cambridge Companion to Quine'', Roger F. Gibson, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 199</ref>

This influence can be seen in ''Word and Object''. In chapter 2 a linguist has to translate a native's unknown language into English. What is so specifically behavioristic there is that the linguist has nothing to go on but verbal behavior from the native and the visible environment the native interacts with. The same view is displayed in chapter 3 where Quine describes how a baby learns its first words. In this chapter Quine also mentions [[B.F. Skinner]], a well known behaviorist, as one of his influences. The opposite view to Quine's and Skinner's in [[philosophy of language]] is represented by [[Noam Chomsky]]'s [[linguistic nativism]].<ref name=WO>{{cite book |last=Quine |first=Willard Van Orman |date=2013 |origyearorig-year=1960 |title=Word and Object |edition=New |___location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |isbn=9780262518314 |oclc=808006883 |doi=10.7551/mitpress/9636.001.0001}} New edition with a foreword by [[Patricia Churchland]].</ref>{{rp|73}}

==Translation and meaning==

{{Main|Radical translation}}

In the second chapter of ''Word and Object'', Quine investigates the concept of meaning. He shows to what extent his own, empirical, notion of meaning can give an account for our intuitive concept of meaning: 'what a sentence shares with its translation'.<ref name=WO/>{{rp|29}} Quine also introduces his famous principle of ''indeterminacy of translation'', with the help of the [[thought experiment]] of [[radical translation]], i.e. translation of a hitherto unknown language (called Jungle by Quine) into English. The point of this thought experiment is to show that a [[Behaviorism|behavioristic]] account of meaning does not allow for the determination of the right manual for translating one language into another, as there is no such single right translation manual.<ref name="QuineComp">{{cite book |author=Harman, G.|editor=Harman, G. |editor2=Lepore, E. |title=A Companion to W.V.O. Quine|publisher=Wiley |___location=Hoboken, NJ |year=2013 |pages=236–237 |isbn=9781118607992 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref>

A linguist desiring to translate Jungle has to set up his translation manual based only on the events happening around him/her, the stimulations, combined with the verbal and non-verbal [[behaviour]] of Jungle natives.<ref name="Hookway740">{{cite book |author=Hookway, C. J. |editor=Honderich, Ted |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |___location=Oxford |year=1995 |page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hond/page/740 740] |isbn=0-19-866132-0 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate= |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00hond/page/740 }}</ref> The linguist can thus only use empirical information, therefore, radical translation will tell us which part of our language can be accounted for by stimulus conditions. In the experiment, Quine assumes that functional Jungle equivalents of 'Yes' and 'No' are relatively easy to be found. This allows the linguist to actively query the utterances of the natives, by repeating words (s)he has heard the native utter, and to subsequently record the native's reaction of assent or dissent.

In determining the translation of the Jungle sentence 'Gavagai' (whose English equivalent would be 'Look, a rabbit'), the linguist first has to determine which [[stimulation]] prompt the native to assent, and which prompt him to dissent to the linguist uttering 'Gavagai'. For example, if the linguist sees a rabbit, and the native says 'Gavagai', the linguist may think that 'Gavagai' means 'Rabbit'. (S)he will then try the sentence 'Gavagai' in different situations caused by the stimulation of a rabbit, to see whether the native assents or dissents to the utterance. The native's reaction is elicited by the linguist's question and the prompting stimulation together. It is the stimulation that prompts the assent or dissent, not the object in the world, because an object in the world can be replaced by a replica, but then the stimulation stays the same. 'The class of all the stimulations [..] that would prompt his assent'<ref name=WO/>{{rp|29}} is the ''affirmative stimulus meaning'' of a certain sentence for a given speaker. ''Negative stimulus meaning'' is defined likewise, with assent and dissent interchanged. Quine calls these affirmative and negative stimulus meaning combined the ''stimulus meaning'' of the sentence. However, since we want to account for the fact that a speaker can change the meaning of a concept, we add the ''modulus'' to the definition of ''stimulus meaning'': the time frame in which the stimulations take place. Once the ''stimulus meaning'' has been found, the linguist can then compare it to the stimulus meanings of sentences in English. The English sentence with (near-) identical stimulus meaning to 'Gavagai' functions as a translation of 'Gavagai'.

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Having taken the first steps in translating sentences, the linguist still has no idea if the term 'gavagai' is actually synonymous to the term 'rabbit', as it is just as plausible to translate it as 'one second rabbit stage', 'undetached rabbit part', 'the spatial whole of all rabbits', or 'rabbithood'. Thus, the identical stimulus meaning of two sentences 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not mean that the terms 'gavagai' and 'rabbit' are synonymous (have the same meaning). In fact, we cannot even be sure that they are coextensive terms,<ref name=Becker/>{{rp|159}} because 'terms and reference are local to our conceptual scheme',<ref name=WO/>{{rp|48}} and cannot be accounted for by stimulus meaning. It appears therefore impossible to determine a unique correct translation of the term 'gavagai', since the linguist can take any of the mentioned possibilities and have it correspond to the stimulus meaning through adaptation of logical connectives. This implies there is no matter of fact to which the word refers. Quine calls this the [[inscrutability of reference]].<ref name="Marsoobian" />

This inscrutability leads to difficulties in translating sentences, especially with sentences that have no direct connection to stimuli. For example, the tautological Jungle sentence 'Gavagai xyz gavagai' could be translated (in accordance with stimulus meaning) as 'This rabbit is the same as this rabbit'. However, when 'gavagai' is taken as 'undetached rabbit part' and 'xyz' as 'is part of the same animal as', the English translation could also run 'This undetached rabbit part is part of the same animal as this undetached rabbit part'. The Jungle sentence and its two English translations all have the same stimulus meaning and truth conditions, even though the two translations are clearly different. Quine concludes that the linguist can set up his translation manual in different ways, that all fit the native's speech behaviour yet are mutually incompatible.<ref name=WO/>{{rp|24}} This is called [[holophrastic indeterminacy]]. There is no one correct translation of Jungle: translation is indeterminate.<ref name="Marsoobian ">{{cite book |author=Marsoobian, A. T., Ryder, J. |editor=Marsoobian, A. T. |editor2=Ryder, J. |title=The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |___location= Hoboken, NJ |year=2003 |page=251 |isbn= 978-0-631-21623-0 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref>

===Analytical hypotheses===